Researchers with the Nature Conservancy in Ohio spent Tuesday collecting water samples from Coshocton County’s rivers to determine if Asian carp have penetrated this far into the Muskingum Watershed.

“Hopefully, they haven’t made it here, but I’d be surprised if they’re not in the lower Muskingum, or at least their DNA,” said John Stark, freshwater conservation director for the organization.

According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, there are four species of carp, native to Asia, that are invasive and dangerous to Ohio, Lake Erie and the Great Lakes system. Two species, bighead and silver carp, pose a particularly high risk for fish life as well as boaters in Ohio.

Using a $46,000 grant from the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District, teams made up of graduate students from Central Michigan University and ODNR personnel will be collecting 2-liter samples of water at seven sites up and down the Muskingum River this week.

The water then will be analyzed by researchers at the university to see if any environmental DNA (or eDNA) from Asian carp is present. eDNA includes scales and mucus from the fish.

“They will be looking for the unique signature for Asian carp,” Stark said. If that is found in the samples, “it doesn’t mean the fish are here, just that their DNA is here.”

Stark said bighead and silver carp feed at the base of the food chain, impacting both native fish species as well as mussels. “They overwhelm everything with their reproduction,” he said.

“If you’re trying to fish, there would be so many carp that it would be impossible to catch anything else,” he said.

“They just make it impossible to find any other fish.”

They are edible, though. “I’ve eaten them, and they are good,” he said. “They’re regarded as a delicacy in Asia.”

In addition, silver carp pose a risk to boaters and people fishing. Silver carp, which weigh between 10 and 20 pounds, are a skittish species that are easily startled when a boat’s engine is turned on. When frightened, they jump out of the water and have hit boaters, causing broken arms, broken jaws and concussions, Stark said.

Asian carp were brought to Arkansas in the 1970s for fish farming. They eventually escaped, making their way to the Arkansas River and then the Mississippi River basin.

Bighead carp have been spotted in the Ohio River near Wheeling, W.Va., and silver carp have been seen in the Great Miami River near Cincinnati. “Silver carp can move enormous distances in a short time — 100 miles in a month,” he said.

The concern is that Asian carp will reach the Great Lakes and threatening commercial fishing there.

Scientists are worried that the carp could cross from the Mississippi basin — which includes the Muskingum Watershed — into rivers feeding into Lake Erie. Two crossing points of medium risk are from Killbuck Creek into the Black River and from the Tuscarawas River to the Cuyahoga River through Long Lake near Akron.

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Under the right conditions, the carp even could swim through Dover Dam, he said.

On Tuesday morning, two teams worked out of Coshocton — one collecting samples near the juncture of the Walhonding River and Killbuck Creek, the other in the Tuscarawas and Muskingum Rivers.

Andrew Tucker, aquatic invasive species expert for The Nature Conservancy, collected 30 samples on the Tuscarawas and Muskingum.

“We collected half our samples in the backwater and half in the middle of the channel,” he said.

eDNA tends to accumulate in the scum line along the banks of rivers, he said.

Two team members filtered the water that afternoon. The samples will be frozen and then taken back to Central Michigan University, where the DNA will be extracted.

“Hopefully, we won’t find anything,” Tucker said.

Stark said he expects to get the results of the tests by late December or early January.

He described the tests as an “early warning system.”

“The quicker you know about it and the quicker you respond, the quicker you can halt their reproduction,” Stark said.